Thursday, October 11, 2012

I am not sure what is so unique about the below photo of Chennai police car that I'd clicked years ago.
First, the Times of India used it in an article without credit and payment and eventually apologized. [Details here]

Now, I was surprised to find it a print ad in The Hindu (Chennai Edition, 10th October 2012). It was an ad about IFSEC & HOMELAND Security Conference to be held in Noida in November. If you notice carefully, the second image in the ad is the same car as above... My photo of the Chennai Police car...

That image comes first in Google image search for a set of keywords and may be because of this, its happily copied by internet user, people from the ad agency who worked on the ad included.

I started adding watermarks to my images and am uploading only low resolution images after the Times of India incident. But that doesn't discourage those who don't respect intellectual property rights.

Not sure if The Hindu will take any responsibility as it is an advertisement. I am checking with IFSEC and UBM if they care to respond. I tweeted to their twitter handle (@ifsec) and as expected there's been no response. I'll drop a mail to the guy in the ad- Anupam Sah and see if he cares to respond. UBM group seems to be the organizer of the event.

Below: Same photo in a TOI article 4 years ago...

Update: I received below response from UBM Head of Marketing

Dear Mr. Hande,

We apologise unreservedly for the use of your image in the advertisement. Your email has prompted an immediate review of our image sourcing policy. Going forward, We will ensure we have full permission before the use of such images.

8
comments
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Really unethical. Atleast they have to get the permission or have to inform to use the photo. Because of less knowledge of internet, many people think that the images got in google seach can be used freely and has no copyrights! But the sad part is, our newspapers are also like this!!

All,Thanks for your support. I've received below response from UBM's Head of marketing:

"Dear Mr. Hande,

We apologise unreservedly for the use of your image in the advertisement. Your email has prompted an immediate review of our image sourcing policy. Going forward, We will ensure we have full permission before the use of such images.